Site Search Navigation

Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

How Fighting Became So Ferocious

By Andrew Podnieks December 15, 2011 2:48 pmDecember 15, 2011 2:48 pm

Marty McSorley being escorted from the ice after fighting with Donald Brashear in 2000.

Although fighting has always been accepted in North American hockey and permitted under the N.H.L.’s rules, the role of fighters and the process of dropping the gloves have changed dramatically. In the old days, superstars fought their own battles. Today, there are players with marginal skills and little talent who engage in staged fights that have absolutely nothing to do with the game.

How did we get from there to here? A closer look at some key events in the game’s history — both pugilistic and otherwise — shed light on the elusive answer.

The event: Dec. 6, 1933—In a game in Boston, Bruins defenseman Eddie Shore ended the career of Toronto’s Ace Bailey after attacking him from behind and nearly killing him. The two shook hands a few weeks later at Maple Leaf Gardens during the first All-Star Game (held to raise funds for Bailey and his family because his playing career was over) to thunderous applause.

The result: Nothing changed. The N.H.L.’s best players fought their own battles and defended their teammates with a tribalism reflective of the era.

The event: Feb. 1, 1959 — In a Detroit-Rangers game, Gordie Howe beat Lou Fontinato to a pulp, Fontinato’s badly beaten face appearing soon after on the cover of Life magazine.

The result: Hockey fighting was glamorized with Hollywood lighting, the heroic Fontinato praised for taking on the toughest hombre of them all — Howe — and living to tell the tale. Perhaps hockey’s first “reality TV” moment. This was the apotheosis of the mano a mano fight in which “the heat of the moment” fighting was always accepted as “part of the game.”

The event: Summer 1959 — The N.H.L. instituted a rule making it a penalty to leave the bench to participate in a fight.

The result: Although this did little to quell bench-clearing brawls, the rule did acknowledge that fighters should at least be participating in the game at the time they dropped their gloves. To jump off the bench expressly to fight was gratuitous impatience.

The event: Sept. 21, 1969 — In an exhibition game in Ottawa (not an N.H.L. city at the time), Boston’s Ted Green and St. Louis’s Wayne Maki engaged in a vicious stick-swinging brawl. After narrowly avoiding a swing from Green’s stick, Maki clubbed Green directly on the head. Green had to have several brain operations and required a steel plate to be inserted into his head. He returned to play a year later. Both players were charged with assault but later acquitted. Maki was suspended for 30 days and Green 13 games.

The result: A defining moment in the league’s history, the dark side to Fontinato’s celebratory punchup with Howe a decade earlier. This incident involved sticks, not fists, and the outcry was pronounced. The 1960s saw a major change in fighting. Whereas the stars of the game always previously fought their own battles, John Ferguson and Ted Green were players of lesser talent who played first and foremost to intimidate opponents. Their job was to fight and to scare opponents.

The event: Summer 1971 — The N.H.L. instituted a rule giving the third man in a fight (i.e., the extra man who makes a fight imbalanced) an automatic game misconduct.

The result: This rule was a direct result of the encroachment of the enforcer on the game. With designated fighters being brought in, fights could be lopsided and teammates would jump in to help one getting pummeled and “third man in” penalties were common. The player who received that penalty was usually praised by teammates and fans for sticking up for a teammate.

The event: 1973-75 — The Philadelphia Flyers won consecutive Stanley Cup championships employing a violence-first strategy that terrified other teams and sent the league into its darkest days. “They can’t call everything,” was Coach Fred Shero’s mantra in reference to the referees’ inability to contain Philadelphia’s tactics.

The result: — Mayhem on ice. While Paul Newman romanticized the goonery in the movie “Slap Shot,” the real world of hockey featured fights on a nightly basis. In 1973-74, four N.H.L. teams topped 1,000 penalty minutes. The next season, that number jumped to 15. Skill took a back seat to intimidation, but thanks to the great Montreal Canadiens teams of the late 1970s, the brawling gave way to superior skill.

The Habs first outfought the Flyers, and then outskilled them, restoring hockey’s reputation and forcing the Shero brand of violence out of the building. Nonetheless,the most notorious fighters could still play the game. To wit, Tiger Williams, the most penalized player in N.H.L. history, scored 35 goals with Vancouver in 1980-81 and had six other seasons of 18 goals or more. Even the villainous Dave “the Hammer” Schultz scored 20 goals with the Flyers in 1973-74 during a year when he led the league in penalty minutes. Even designated fighters took a regular shift.

The event: Summer 1979 — The N.H.L. introduced a helmet rule, making helmets mandatory for all new players entering the league and optional for established players (most of whom complied voluntarily).
The result: With the arrival of plastic helmets, fighting became more dangerous. Many a knuckle was broken, and players tried to pry the helmet off before punching.

The event: Feb. 26, 1987 — The last full-scale bench-clearing brawl in the N.H.L. took place between Boston and the Quebec Nordiques.

The result: This is one aspect of the game the league made a calculated effort to eliminate. Fighting continued on a different course. It wasn’t about intimidation, as it had been with the Flyers, but it was used to protect star players. The definitive case in point was Marty McSorley’s role in Wayne Gretzky’s success. Gretzky insisted McSorley be with him when his number 99 was retired by Los Angeles and again by the Edmonton Oilers to acknowledge his importance.

Meanwhile, Bob Probert was at the height of his powers, a combination of goon, power forward, and skilled forward unlike anything the league had seen before. At 6’3” 225 pounds, he was huge. In 1987-88, he had 29 goals and 62 points in 74 games and led the league with 398 penalty minutes. No fighter would ever have as good a season again with his stick and as intimidating a one with his fists at the same time.

The event: Summer 1992 — The N.H.L. instituted the instigator rule whereby the player deemed to have started a fight was assessed an automatic game misconduct.

The result: Fighters continued to fight, but they were tossed from a game more often and teams had to have more than one tough guy available. As well, Eric Lindros started his first N.H.L. season. His arrival heralded in a new era of bigger, taller and stronger players. Now, the average player is 6-1 and 204 pounds.

The event: Feb. 21, 2000—The McSorley-Brashear incident

The result: It was perhaps the most significant attack of its kind in league history not because of its violence (which was bad enough) but because it was so widely seen. By the next morning, Marty McSorley’s hitting Donald Brashear in the head from behind and knocking him unconscious with his stick was replayed everywhere on television and on the Internet. The 36-year-old McSorley was charged with assault and pleaded guilty, but served no jail time. He was suspended one calendar year, effectively ending his career.

The event: March 8, 2004 — The Moore-Bertuzzi incident

The result: The nadir of the game brought the game’s violence, code, and system of official and unofficial punishment into focus. Todd Bertuzzi, all 6-3, 225 pounds of him, leaped onto Steve Moore from behind as he delivered a punch to the player’s head. Moore was unconscious before he hit the ice, was removed on a stretcher, and never played another game. In fact, he has never been able to resume all-out physical activity. Bertuzzi’s tearful and televised apology was greeted by Moore first by silence and then by a civil suit that will go to court in Toronto in September 2012. A favorable court ruling for Moore will likely alter the game forever, every player knowing that any willful injury to an opponent could cost him millions.

The event: Dec. 12, 2008 — Whitby Dunlops Senior AAA player Don Sanderson hit his head on the ice at the end of a fight and died several weeks later in the hospital

The result: Sanderson got into a fight. He struck his head falling down at the end of the fight. He died. Every league should do everything in its power to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

The result: Kelly had been trying to eliminate staged fights, appealing to the players to allow rules to combat what was clearly a senseless element of the game. The players refused to go along and players with minimal skill who got sometimes only a few minutes of ice time a game remained on every N.H.L. roster. So far in 2011-12, of the top 30 leaders in penalty minutes, two players have zero goals, seven have one goal, and three have two goals. In an era of visors, players now show their toughness by tossing their helmets aside, adjusting their elbow pads, kicking nearby sticks and gloves out of the way, and settling in for a boxing-type fight that has no relation to the fighting of Eddie Shore, Gordie Howe, Ted Green, or even Tiger Williams.

Andrew Podnieks is the author of more than 60 books on hockey, most recently “Sid vs. Ovi: Natural Born Rivals” and “NHL Records Forever.”

What's Next

About

Slap Shot, the New York Times hockey blog, reports on the Rangers, the National Hockey League and anything that glides quickly across a frozen surface anywhere on the globe, from the snowy prairies of Saskatchewan to the frigid steppes of Russia and beyond, like, say, Phoenix.

Archive

Recent Posts

Thank you for visiting Slap Shot. This blog’s regular features, including live game analysis, reader discussion, news and notes from Jeff Z. Klein and others, can now be found on the Hockey section front.Read more…

The Devils took Anthony Brodeur, an 18-year-old goalie, with the 208th pick of the 211-pick draft, sending their seventh-round pick in 2015 to the Kings in exchange for the chance to pick Brodeur. Read more…